April 30 is a Witches Sabbath called Beltane.

Beltane. A  night of bonfires and woodlands and sex. A celebration of the potency of Life and  the bliss of Spring. A night when the veils between the dimensions are thin thin thin. And diverse beings pass through them easily. 

A night for Witches to convene on top of wild craggy peaks and dance about with naked abandon while multitudinous stars glimmer overhead.

 A night to honor the sheer exuberance of Creation. To  frolic sexually through the forests all night long and in the morning dance around a  Maypole.

I was born on April 30, 1948 in Bixby Knolls Hospital, Long Beach, California at 9:45 pm.

The first word that comes to mind re: my childhood is grim.My parents were born in 1904 and 1905 and came from a time when it was apparently normal to get drunk and beat your kids. My parents really didn't have any foundation as to how to raise children. 

I am a very social creature yet all my life I felt alienated. Like I didn't belong anywhere. My ethnicity is mixed so I couldn't identify with any one group.  Certainly in one way this was beneficial to my growth as an artist, to be an outsider, an observer, but there was always a background of aloneness that permeated daily existence. My father died in 1979 and my mother died in 1987.

I thought that "to find my place in the sun," to find my belonging , I had to get to the financial point of being able to purchase property, and that would be my place in the sun. Well, maybe so, but I have not been  in any sort of monetary place for that to happen. I had resigned myself to never finding it.

 Then last year, at the end of November, my brother called me and told me about a performance at the Mission in San Juan Bautista CA of The Virgin of Guadalupe, performed by El Teatro Campesino. He lives there and his new lady love was involved with the company. Accompanied by my friend Bonny I went to see this play on the Feast Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, December 12.

 The story of the  Virgin is as follows: The area this story took place in is called Tepeyac, later changed to Guadalupe by the Christian missionaries.It was a region dedicated to an Aztec Goddess: Tonantzin. One winter morning a peasant named Juan Diego was heading to mass when a brilliant light appeared before him, in it was an apparition of Mother Mary .  She told him to go tell the bishop what he had seen and that she  wanted a basilica built on that spot. The bishop of course didn't believe him and demanded proof. Back Juan Diego goes to Mother Mary and she tells him to gather the roses that were blooming nearby (this was winter). He did so, placing them into his serape. When he gave the bishop the flowers there was, lo and behold, an image of the Virgin Mary on his serape. The basilica was built and the Virgin of Guadalupe is Mexico's "Patron Saint"

 The performance was spectacular. Singing, dancing,  and all the performers seemed to be in a trance state. This video clip is the only one available, at least on Youtube. It will give you an idea of the story. The gist of what they are singing is:

Chorus: "In the Arc of Colors She comes down from the sky."

Mother Mary and Juan Diego engage in a back and forth. He is saying,  "Why me? I am just a lowly peasant. She is saying "You are one of my children. I have come because of the injustices done in the name of my Son. You and your people are treated badly"